Diane Best was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and studied in the San Francisco area (Stanford University, San Francisco Art Institute), before moving south to Los Angeles. There, she did commercial artwork for the entertainment industry and commissioned portraits, while pursuing and showing her original work.
The high desert wilderness was her home for 8 years, where she worked freelance for Los Angeles animation studios (background painting), but over time shifted the focus of her talent to capturing the intense drama of the desert landscape that surrounded her. Now living in Joshua Tree, CA, Diane has focused her talent exclusively on capturing the dramatic imagery of various desert landscapes. She works in a variety of media including acrylic, graphite, photography and video.
Diane Best’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Joshua Tree, 29 Palms, New Hampshire, New York, and Boston. She was recently featured in an exhibition at the Carnegie Museum in Oxnard, CA and had a solo show at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles in 2008. Diane also teaches painting workshops in Joshua Tree National Park for the Desert Institute.